Tag: birthday

The full moon hovered brightly over the land last eve and Yule was nigh. The 12 days of Christmas was originally the 12 days of Yule. Festivities, bonfires, hearth fires, the yule log, the decorated trees, feeding the birds and other wildlife, exchanging gifts, and checking on the elderly and homebound fill the days of Yule leading to new year.

It is a quiet morning here in my cozy home. Father Sun peeks through the windows while climbing to start the day. I sip my warm coffee, the earthiness and steam filling the air. We keep the lights on the tree on often. Just sitting in my rocking chair watching the glimmering lights, scanning the many ornaments that hold place as story tellers, makes me joyful and calm. I put a Christmas album on. My favorite is Andy Williams. The presents are piled on the bed ready to be wrapped in paper and bows.

Christmas past when my children were very young. (1999)

The birds outside sing and dart about. The fat squirrel looks at me through the window. She is out of bird seed. Sweet thing; I wish blessings on all the wildlife. A young eagle landed in the tree the other day and we sat together for some time. The geese fly overhead noisily, their synchronized flying like swimmers in the sky. Upon this great landscape of earth is such a lovely place to live. I am thankful each day for health, for life, for family, for this cozy home where the hearth fires burn.

Dreaming of Christmas cookies

Yesterday I did ceremony on my friends who are getting married beneath the full moon by a fire outdoors. Today I get the honor of officiating their wedding. Tomorrow we are off to my cousin’s, the next day to our friends’, home again for Christmas eve and my children will all gather here. Santa knows to come to Grammie and Pa’s house. Christmas morning will shine bright with the love of family. A late Hannukah celebration with family and my daughter’s birthday round out the festivities before the new year dawns with promise and light.

Christmas present. My beautiful granddaughters, Maryjane and Ayla.

What are your plans for the holidays, my Friends? From our home to yours, I wish you the happiest Christmas and a blessed Yule. May you be with those you love and may peace fill your home.

My birthday is Saturday. The years fly by in the breeze faster than I can blink but I am grateful for each and every year that I get to celebrate being on this beautiful earth.

New Year’s makes me ponder how I can do things better and makes me set lofty financial and personal goals. Autumn makes me rethink what I need and what I don’t need. It is a cleansing of sorts. My birthday makes me think of ways that I can live. How can I take in each day more deeply? How I can be more present and more compassionate and more alive? It makes me think…what if?

What if I stopped making a to-do list? Would anything actually get done? Instead of cramming sixty-two things into one day, what if each thing was done as I thought of them.

What if I stopped counting every penny? Would money begin to flow in after I loosened my grip on worry?

What if I stopped circling back every time I began to move forward in my work? Can I let go?

What if I got a Buddhist hair cut? Would people think I was sick? Or ugly? What if it didn’t matter? What if I released my appearance and symbolically started anew on my journey? How fun would that be to not do my hair. Or to not have a headache every night from hair ties?

Why is cutting my hair or releasing worry or moving forward or not having a to-do list so monumental?

What if I took more time to do yoga and to sit in coffee shops writing or got a bicycle and rode around town? What if I spent more time in the garden or with my children or reading? What if I had tea time every day at 4? What if I cut my hair?

When her brother turned eighteen, we threw him a big surprise party. He and his friend were a little late but when they walked in a long table of people had menus covering their faces and yelled surprise! When her sister turned eighteen shortly after we did a reverse surprise party since we knew she would expect it. She walked into the restaurant and no one was there! One by one, people came, old friends, new friends, family. So the next year when Emily was turning eighteen there was just no way for me to pull off another surprise party! So I waited.

My baby turns twenty-one years old today.

We have so much fun together; shopping, vacationing, or relaxing together. Her daughter is one of the greatest loves of my life. Emily was a daddy’s girl growing up but as an adult we enjoy each other’s company so much. I wanted to do something special for her. As a young mama in a serious relationship trying to make it out there in the world, she doesn’t have time to be twenty-one. She could be thirty already. But there is something special about my little girl. She is bright, intelligent, artistic, creative, loving, and fun. She is beautiful.

So we gathered the troops. A long table of people met her as she turned the corner with menus over the faces and SURPRISE! She actually teared up.

Her best friend growing up whom she hadn’t seen for five years came.

Her siblings that said they couldn’t make it to dinner.

Her aunt and our friends that are family.

It was a glorious evening of food and laughter and celebrating a young woman who we are all incredibly proud of.

As I get older the things I treasure are fewer but hold more intensity. Relationships tend to take precedence in life these days. The sacredness of being on this life journey with another soul is so breathtakingly beautiful and I have such gratitude for those who have chosen to stay in my life and partake in it.

One of my very best friends has a birthday today. All birthdays are a gift. And the birthday of a very close friend is even more special. We talk every day, no secrets, we build each other up, we straighten each other up, we are equals, and we enjoy each other’s company. We are business partners and have spent the last twenty-two years (very likely longer though…pretty certain she was my mother in my last life!) building that love and companionship.

Shyanne during her very favorite time of year!

This young woman has always been an old soul. Her kindness and her empathy are evident and she is a powerful plant medicine maker and healer. She is gorgeous on the outside and just as shining and lovely on the inside. I cannot tell you how lucky I feel to have given birth to that little girl-now woman- 22 years ago.

My wish for my Shyanne Mae is that she has a lovely day and a year filled with dreams coming true. Possibilities unfolding. Laughter ringing. And peace enfolding her every desire and path on her journey. I wish her a year of great love.

This little girl will forever be our little girl. She is often mistaken as her sister’s twin, she adores her brother and sister, she is a loyal and generous friend, and an inspiring mother, and forever our baby.

Today our quiet and enchanting youngest child turns twenty. Hard to believe all of our children are in their twenties now! (Seems truly that Doug and I were in our twenties but a minute ago.) I am proud of how this amazing, feisty, fun child has become an amazing, feisty, fun, and elegant young woman. We are so lucky that we were chosen to be her parents. That we got to raise this smiley red head. That she is our baby. Our life has been so much better because of it.

I have learned so much from this young woman with her wit and strength, her independence and her grace, she is a fine example. Today I wish my Emily Lynn peace in the chaos of life. The ability to see past bills, and work, and people, and modern life and see the enchantment and joy of the every day. To see that everything passes (rather quickly) and to take a moment to breathe in youth, and stars, and flowers, and hiking trails, and that she sees all of her dreams come true.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl. Dad and I love you soooo much! I am proud to call you my daughter and friend.

For those that are long time readers, the people that are mentioned in my blog are almost characters in a book. It’s fun to see folks that read the blog meet my friends for the first time. It’s almost as if they know them! Rodney is one of those characters. He and his wife, Pat, have been our best friends for twelve years now. I have never had friends for that long. We have traveled together, celebrated together, watched our kids grow up, mourned together (especially when Rodney’s mom, Kat, died last July. I called her my mom too), and laughed together. When we were losing everything and about to lose our minds, they threw us in their backseat and took us to Utah for four days to play. We go to New Mexico together and plan our respective homesteads. They are moving to Pueblo this year along with Rodney’s dad, Rod. These are my people.

Today Rodney turns fifty. I think that is a monumental success and reason to celebrate. We have all lost friends that did not make it to fifty. This is a gift, a blessing, and I am blessed to still call this man my friend. We have a lot in common spiritually, and our families have really melded into one. My granddaughter, Maryjane, calls them Aunt and Uncle, and their son is her best friend (he is 16…that is the sweetest kid) and cousin. We are their grandchildren’s godparents.

So today I just wanted to share this celebration with all of you out there. Happy Birthday to my best friend, travel partner, confidant, and trouble maker. May you get every wish come true! Wishing you health, happiness, love, and peace. And a home by us!

For the first year of her life not a human on earth could take that baby off of my hip. We were inextricably bonded, that little girl and I. She entered the world with dark curly hair and big blue eyes. She looked like one of grandma’s antique dolls, all porcelain skin and small.

Shyanne Mae and I never had a fight, she was a really, really good girl. Always more mature than her age and always sweet and kind. She brought home nearly dead (and sometimes dead) animals to rehabilitate. She loved her friends and her family with all of her heart. She asked her third grade teacher out for lunch and shopping. Fun and spunky, she loved gymnastics and dance and was great at both. We would take her to bars to sing and she would blow people away. She was a fun, light hearted girl. I always called her Pumpkin. Her dad always called her Cupcake. Baking up a storm and creating amazing confections (she is starting her own bakery on the side this year) made her nicknames perfect. Her Indian name is Little Deer which sums up her personality beautifully.

As she became a teenager with her two siblings she began to pull away. Broke the apron strings, went into the world to become herself. To find herself. It broke my heart that she was no longer my little girl so attached to my hip. But I knew she had to grow up sometime.

One of the most extraordinary things that happened to us this year was Shyanne deciding she wanted to pursue herbalism. She is not attached to my hip any longer, but our bond is still there, and now we stand side by side working together to help animals and people. She had grown up into a fine young woman. One I am very proud of.

I am sitting in the waiting room between the first part of my life and the second. A space with cream colored walls and carpet and a fireplace run by a light switch. It’s quiet here in this respite room as I wait for the universe to throw open the next door. I breathe and listen to my own heart beat. My lesson here is rest. Learning to balance rest, work, and play. I am plenty good at the work and play part, not so much with the rest. I am forced to learn rest before I can move on. It is imperative to the creation and success of our next ventures.

I will be forty-two next week. I am thankful for each and every birthday as I know how precious they are no matter the age. Perhaps I will be sitting on a beach or running about the San Diego zoo or strolling a really fresh farmer’s market. I know not, open to adventure, we fly out Tuesday to stay with our friends, Lisa and Steve, who graciously opened their home to us. We are taking the opportunity to travel some this year before we have to find farm sitters again!

I am really listening to myself in the silence. I am highly sensitive person. I have to be careful what I watch or read as it can completely change my heart rate, ignite fear, create chaos. I close my eyes and meditate on nothing, or love, or acceptance, or peace as I look out beyond the crows to the snow bound mountains and the low lying clouds that embrace. I stretch into yoga poses, more flexible and getting stronger than I have been in a long time. I have written poetry and gratitude every day since the beginning of the year and my poetry collection is growing into an anthology of my life. I recognize myself more, I embrace change, I look forward to the future, but I embrace today. Even the dishwasher and dryer (which I still could do without).

The highlight of this beautiful apartment is the garden tub. The first I have fit in at nearly six feet tall. It is wide in girth and long and luxurious as I rest my neck against its back and meld into the warm water in the warm bathroom with candles lit. My spirit resetting at each wave of water and each meditation prompt, and each yoga move, and each delicious clean dish served from my kitchen. A lovely interim.

The Luxury Bath

As the bath is filling, light candles. Let there be silence, it is mesmerizing.

To water add a good drizzle of oil, such as olive, apricot kernel, avocado, sunflower, et cetera.

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Katie Lynn Sanders is an urban Farmgirl, writer, Mama, Grammie, and herbalist. Katie lives with her husband, Gandalf the Great Pyrenees, kitties, and seven chickens in a hundred year old adobe in Pueblo. She is the writer of two blogs; FarmgirlSchool.org and DancingWithFeathers.com. You can find all of Katie's books at www.AuthorKatieSanders.com